Twenty-eight comments

Bee’s Wing

Bees wing

I have an album of Kathryn Tickell who plays northumbrian pipes and fiddle. She plays a version of the bees wing on the fiddle and on the liner notes it says that the tune The Bee’s Wing was composed by James Hill of Gateshead. Bee’s Wing, according to the notes, was a famous Newcastle racehorse in the late 1800’s. There is a version of someone (can’t remember who and I don’t have the cd to hand) playing it on Uilleann Pipes on the Drones and the Chanters Vol 2.

Hornpipe? Hang on a sec …

Hornpipe - most definately

Yup, this is a Hornpipein the Newcastle (N.E.England) style and its a great tune. Its most certainly not a strathspey and its definately not a rant. I can’t think why anyone would considerit tosound Scots asisarchitypically Northumbrian. Irish players (and many American ones) tend flatten out hornpipes and miss out the internal syncopations but they have moved along way from the original when they do this. Musichall hornpipes (like The Stage, The Acrobat, President Garfield) are close to this style. There are some of us who believe that they would be more accurately written in 12/8 than in 4/4.

Kathryn Tickell probably plays the most accurate version of all the recordings I have heard as she plays it in the Newcastle style, in the original key, on a fiddle. James Hill was nicknamed "The Newcastle Paganini" and his tunes are generally demanding. Changing key to make it easy is a cheat!.
Noel Jackson
Angelsof the North

James HILL tune

Definitely a hornpipe from the playing of James Hill who was most famous for his playing of this type of tune.
Tom McConville has made a CD well worthwhile listening to of James Hill’s tunes. What’s an English hornpipe doing in an ITM site?

The hornpipe came from England originally, according to the experts. Plenty of them were of English composition as well.
Piper Joe McLauglin plays this in D on the Drones and Chanters II, with a high D.

Beeswing

Have a look at the list of recordings this tune appears on for a start.

I agree with Noel - changing the key to G is a cheat!

I don’t know why people make such an almighty fuss about this hornpipe being difficult. There’s no reason to show off with it. Just control that ego and enjoy it for the beautiful tune that it is.

I don’t think the variations (3rd and 4th parts) add much to the tune to be honest. Most of the early settings of the tune from 19th century manuscripts e.g. Ryan/Cole’s have the tune in 2 parts only, and with no strathspey-like Scotch snaps. These early settings are all something along the lines of this:

Hornpipe eh?

James Hill

James Hill was born in Scotland and came to Newcastle when fairly young - he wasn’t a native of the area. Whatever his own playing style might have been, though, he was obviously able to please the local audiences and dancers.

This is what he says:
Standard fiddle Hornpipe played on Rudall D Flute. I let this one go as I like the way that the "wheels come off" steadily throughout the tune. What was actually happening was the spring was going on my B flat key. At the end of the set the key broke so that curbed my enthusiasm for using this for my CD.

Nice clean playable version:

This is murder in the form of a hornpipe…
my grampa uses this as a challenge to other fiddlers to see whether someone’s up to snuff on their fiddle.
I, by the way, I have never even attempted to learn it as I think I would go crazy

Tara Breen:

very clever tune

you can see it was written for the fiddle; the finger positions for the first set of four notes is copied and placed onto the next string down to make the third set of four notes, and the pattern for second set of four notes used on the fourth set. And it happens later in the tune as well, if you still follow me.
It works just as well on the whistle. Most of the low ‘C’ and ‘B’ s can be replaced with one an octave higher and it still sounds great. This doesn’t work for a lot of tunes, especially ‘below the belt’ hornpipes and ‘She moved through the Fair’.

Great tune for fiddle

This tune falls well for fiddle in Bb. I found it more comfortable to play that in G when I tried it in that key from here. I know it (somewhat) in Bb so playing it in G also just sounded wrong to my ears. It’s just not like transposing a tune that’s in A to D or other simple sharp key. For fiddle anyway.

With the 2 or 4 part thing…there’s enough to do with 2 parts, and lots of variety just in those sections can be done with triplets or arpeggios if you are playing it for dancers or just giving it a whirl with a few extra repeats. Just my opinion; not any statement re: it’s original composition. I have a copy of Sean MacGuire’s variation (2 parts) and he has some fun with this and triplets in the B part.